by James Riley
And then Nobody closed his chest, and Owen was gone.
Nobody turned to Bethany, who was staring at him with wide eyes. “If you’ll excuse me for just one moment, I need to make sure all three of these gentlemen are secured. Wouldn’t do for them to have any chance to escape in these last moments. I shouldn’t be long, and I promise to be back before the world disappears. Wouldn’t want to miss that, after all.”
Before she could say a word, his head melted down into his body, as did his arms and legs, and soon there was just a large block of featureless torso left.
CHAPTER 52
Let him out!” Bethany shouted, then ran over to Nobody and began punching what remained of him as hard as she could. Her fists pushed into Nobody’s body like it was a beanbag, and she howled in frustration, but she didn’t stop.
It took a moment before she even realized Nobody hadn’t reacted, let alone moved. Even worse, she was getting tired and couldn’t even tell if her punches were accomplishing anything. Had he even felt them?
She stopped hitting the monster and stepped away from him. “Hello?” she said, waving her hand in front of him, but again, she got no response. Was he really in his own body, helping Owen get absorbed?
Or was she just so inconsequential that he didn’t need to even bother with her?
Behind her, she heard a sound of breaking glass, and she whirled around to find her fictional self smacking her cylinder with mostly solid hands, as the rest of her grew even more translucent. “What are you doing?” Bethany yelled, running over to her. “If you break that, you’re going to dissolve away into nothing!”
“What choice do we have?” her fictional self said, her voice muffled by the glass. She kept hitting it as it cracked further, but didn’t shatter. “He’s got Owen!”
“If you come out of there, you’re going to disappear,” Bethany said quietly. “Unless we rejoin, I mean. And if we do that . . . we’ll lose Dad.”
Her fictional self shook her head violently. “Nobody already broke the deal. We can save both Dad and Owen if we fight. We just have to stand up to him!”
“But what if we lose? We’d be losing Dad forever, not to mention Owen!”
“We’ve already lost Owen! I’m not going to just let Nobody have him, deal or not. Dad would want us to fight.”
“Dad would want us to think things through and figure out what makes the most sense!” Bethany shouted back.
“Stop being such a coward!”
“I’m trying to protect Dad!”
“He doesn’t need your help!”
“But you obviously do! Look at you, you’re barely there. And whose fault is that?”
Fictional Bethany glared angrily at her, then slowly floated back to the bottom of the glass cylinder. “You’re right,” she whispered, so softly Bethany could barely make it out. “This is my fault. If I hadn’t rewritten myself so much, I’d still be able to do something here and wouldn’t need you. So get your I-told-you-sos out of the way. I deserve them.”
Bethany opened her mouth to do just that, then took a deep breath instead. As she released it, she brought Gwen to mind again, remembering how amazing it felt to have a friend who just liked you for who you were, no matter what mistakes you made.
“I’m just as much to blame,” she said finally. “If I’d let us take more risks, we maybe could have stopped all of this before it started. I was so afraid of getting in trouble that I held us back, even when it made sense to jump in.”
“You just wanted to protect us.”
“And you just wanted to save our friends and Dad.” She shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter what got us here, not anymore. We need to decide what to do now.”
“I’m not leaving Owen inside Nobody,” fictional Bethany said. “Even if it kills me, I’m going to try to rescue him.”
Bethany stared at her for a moment, then looked up at her father, floating motionless in midair. Is that really what you’d want us to do? Her eyes fell on the Twilight symbol on his chest, and she knew the answer to her question.
Fictional Bethany was right. Their father would never want his own safety to come before anyone else’s.
“Okay,” she said to her fictional self. “Let’s get you out. We can’t join back together with you stuck in there.”
Her fictional self stared up at her in surprise, then smiled and began banging on the glass even more enthusiastically. Bethany looked around for something to help her and spied the possibility ray gun Owen had used on Nobody. “Hopefully this will be good for something,” she said, then ran it back to her trapped fictional self and used the ray gun’s handle to smash the glass from the outside.
With them both working on it, the glass shattered quickly, and fictional Bethany poured out of the container and onto the floor like a misty fog. She lifted one semisolid hand toward Bethany, who bit her lip, then pushed her own hand toward her twin’s.
“This is going to hurt,” Bethany said, wincing. Her twin winked at her and grabbed her hand.
As their fingers touched, an uncomfortable pressure filled her hand, like her skin was too small to contain all of her. As their fingers slowly merged, the pressure grew worse, and without even realizing it, Bethany started to pull her hand away. But strong fingers grabbed her wrist, holding on.
“We can do this!” her fictional self said, now much more solid as she held Bethany’s arm with her nonmerged hand. “Don’t let go, or we’ll lose Owen!”
“I know that!” Bethany shouted as their hands and wrists came together, and she bit her lip to keep from groaning at the pain. “I just want it . . . to hurry up!”
Their arms slowly pushed together, and now pain started shooting up to her shoulder. Bethany growled and stamped her feet, just trying to distract herself. “When we’re . . . back together,” her fictional self said, sounding just as uncomfortable, “what’s the plan?”
“You’re asking me?” Bethany said. “That’s . . . new!”
“I can’t keep . . . jumping without looking first,” fictional Bethany said. “You need to hold me back for both of our sakes!”
“Right now,” Bethany told her, gritting her teeth, “I think it’s time . . . for you to go wild. Give Nobody . . . everything you’ve got!”
Her fictional self looked at her almost gratefully, only to be yanked away by an enormous hand.
“Oh, Bethany,” Nobody said, shaking his head, holding her fictional twin off the ground. “Should you really be out of your cage?” He squeezed his fingers together, and her fictional self let out a scream of pain. “You’ve broken our deal. And you know what that means.”
“No!” both Bethanys screamed at once, but Nobody had already turned to their father.
“Once more, you’ve let him down,” he said to them, gesturing with a free hand. Doc Twilight dropped to the ground in a heap, then slowly looked up at the scene before him.
“Girls?” he said in shock, then turned to Nobody. “Let them go!”
“You have but a moment left before you disappear, Christian,” Nobody said to him. “Do you really want vague threats to be your last words to your daughters?”
Their father looked down at himself, then raised a translucent hand and watched as it disappeared. “No,” he whispered, then turned to his daughters. “Bethany, both of you, I love you more than you could possibly imagin—”
His mouth faded away, but his eyes still stared at them, filled with both fear and love as tears slowly passed through what remained of his body.
And then even those disappeared, and their father was gone.
CHAPTER 53
YOU MONSTER!” fictional Bethany shouted, rewriting her arm into a huge sword. She swung it right through the arm holding her, but the sword just passed through him, his body opening and closing as it passed, never completely separating.
“You knew the rules,” he told her. “I thought of all things, your father would be able to keep you under control. But not even his life was enough. This
is entirely upon you.”
She cried out incoherently and stabbed at him again and again as her body started fading away, just like their father’s.
“Bethany, stop!” nonfictional Bethany shouted up at her twin. “You’re going to disappear too!”
“I don’t care, as long as I take him with me!” she shouted, finally freeing herself as she stabbed through the hand holding her in the air. It disappeared as the sword passed through it, and she fell to the ground hard.
“I cannot allow that, I’m afraid,” Nobody said, letting fictional Bethany’s strikes pass right through him as he spoke. “I must be left to restart our world, to build it anew. But I don’t believe you have long left before becoming potential. Perhaps I won’t bring you back in our new world. I can’t have you constantly trying to change things back, after all.”
Nonfictional Bethany stared at the spot her father had just been, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She’d lost him, and this time, it was her fault. Both Bethanys were to blame, and now she was going to lose her fictional self too, not to mention Owen.
She had to do something. But as she turned to watch her other self fight against Nobody, she realized she had no idea what.
Fictional Bethany had all of the imagination, and that left nonfictional Bethany with no ideas of where to even begin.
“Fight me, you coward!” fictional Bethany shouted, launching herself straight at Nobody in the shape of a rocket. He caught her right before she hit him, though, and slammed her into the floor so hard the castle shook.
“There’s nothing you can do to stop me,” Nobody told her calmly, holding her down. “Even if you were whole, you’d have no hope of defeating me. Not when I can match any rewriting you do myself.”
Fictional Bethany struggled against his grip, morphing into several things and growing fainter by the minute. She shouted in frustration, and her eyes locked on Bethany’s, pleading for help.
Be more fictional, she heard Kiel say in her mind. But that was the last thing she could do now! She literally didn’t have it in her.
But maybe she could take a lesson from someone who did?
“I’m afraid this is the end, Bethany,” Nobody was saying to her fictional self. “I truly intended to bring you back into my new world and give you the family you were always meant to have, just with a few changes. I could never allow your father to return. He would never consent to live under my new order. But now you shall join him in whatever lies beyond possibility. Say good-bye to your nonfictional self.”
“How can I?” Bethany whispered. “She’s gone.”
“What?” Nobody turned his head to look, just as a rocket ship slammed into his head, this one identical to the one fictional Bethany had made a moment earlier. The impact sent him crashing through the castle wall, collapsing it around him.
Fictional Bethany, now free, slowly stood up and looked through the hole in the wall with surprise. “Bethany?” she said quietly.
A moment passed, and then nonfictional Bethany stumbled through the rubble, shaking her head. “Sorry I couldn’t think of anything original,” she said, limping toward her fictional twin. “Without an imagination, I had to steal from yours.”
“But how did you do that?” her fictional self said as she continued fading away.
Bethany grinned. “Hey, I still have my superpowers. Charm changed our DNA, so we both got them when we split. I just never had a good reason to use them before.”
Fictional Bethany laughed, then hugged her twin with what was left of her arms. Bethany hugged back for a moment, then separated. “Ready?” she asked.
Fictional Bethany nodded. “I’m so sorry for everything I did. I promise to listen to you from now on.”
“Don’t,” nonfictional Bethany said. “We need us both. Look at us separately. Neither of us is working right. Maybe we don’t need to live in harmony so much as just try to be happy with each other.” She smiled. “I’m trying to be more like Gwen and just think the best of everyone.”
“Solid role model there,” fictional Bethany said, and pushed herself into her twin.
“No!” Nobody shouted from the hole in the wall. An enormous hand grabbed the rubble and pulled him back into the throne room. But this time, he was too late.
The pain was still there as they merged, like their skin was too small to hold all of them. But somehow, Bethany found it more bearable as their bodies and minds merged, becoming one again, becoming half-fictional again.
This feels . . . better, one version of her said in her mind, though she could no longer tell which one.
This feels right, thought the other version. I had no idea how much I was missing without you.
And then there was just Bethany Sanderson, complete and whole. The pain disappeared as quickly as it had come, and she turned to face Nobody, a smile on her face.
“Well, well, well,” she said quietly, cracking her knuckles. “Look who’s back.”
A sneer appeared on his face. “It doesn’t matter!” he shouted. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me!”
“Let’s test that out,” she whispered, then rewrote herself into a giant fist and punched him through the wall again. As he went crashing through, she gave herself Owen’s time powers and sped up time so that she appeared right next to him as he flew, then rewrote herself into a giant anvil, dropping on him as he landed. The force of the impact sent a quake running through the remaining walls of the castle, tumbling them to the ground.
Nobody roared in anger as Bethany rewrote herself back to normal, completely whole this time, thanks to her nonfictional half. He shoved one hand at her face, only for it to disappear inches from her, turning into a mist of some sort. His other hand punched her in her stomach, and she doubled over, inhaling the mist automatically as she sucked in air. “I just infected you with the most dangerous viruses to ever exist,” he said as she quickly covered her mouth. “You’ll be dead within seconds if I don’t cure you. Now stop this!”
Bethany’s eyes widened, and she rewrote her entire body into pure flame. The intense fire scorched the viruses out of her system, and she rewrote herself back to normal. “It’s not too late to end this,” she told him. “We can bring the worlds and everyone back. Together I’m sure we can find a way to turn back the possibility wave, and—”
A thousand fists exploded out of his chest, flying at her head. She put up as many arms as she could create to block them, but a few got through, and she cried out in pain. “I never wanted this, Bethany,” he shouted as more of his fists got through her defenses. “I thought you would see reason and go back to the nonfictional world. I never wanted to see you harmed!”
“Enough lies,” she snarled, rewriting her new arms into a solid metal shield and pushing back to her feet. “You think you’re such a hero? You’re erasing everyone in this reality just because you’re annoyed that someone might have thought you up. Oh, no, join the club. We’re all created by someone else. They’re called parents.”
“I want to do what is right for my people!” Nobody shouted, and slammed his hands into her shield, splitting it in half. As she rewrote it back into her body, Nobody brought his hands down, right at her head.
This time, she saw it coming and rewrote her upper half to separate around his hands, then join back together, trapping him. Another rewrite, and she cut his arms off completely, then threw them as far from them as she could. “Fine,” she said, rage filling her. “Then I guess I’ll just cut you into pieces until I find Owen!”
Nobody shook his head. “You have no idea what I can become, child. It doesn’t matter how little or how much of me remains. That’s the beauty of possibility!” He pointed up at the wave of nothingness that had now reached the top of the castle. “I will survive this wave, Bethany. The possibility will overwhelm your nonfictional heritage. The two nonfictionals within me will anchor me while you are washed away, like a fire razing a forest to allow for new growth. Surrender now, and I promise I will bring you and your
friends back in my new world!”
Bethany glanced up at the wave above her head and the nothingness it left behind, then turned back to Nobody. “Here’s my answer,” she said, and grew a mix of magical and science-fictiony armor out of her skin, then rewrote her right hand to grow a massive glowing sword.
“Very well,” Nobody said, matching her with a sword of his own and growing a similar suit of armor. “Then I shall destroy you utterly!”
He reared back to attack, only to pause, a strange look on his face.
Then, out of nowhere, thirteen separate hats grew out of his head.
CHAPTER 54
Owen opened his eyes to find himself in a familiar-looking white space of nothingness and immediately panicked. “Hello?” he shouted, circling around, searching for someone, anyone who might be able to help. “Mr. Black? Other guy? Can you hear me?”
No one answered, and his heart began to race. Was he stuck in here, inside Nobody? But how was there this much room? Nobody wasn’t that big, not usually. Had Nobody rewritten himself to be bigger on the inside than the out? Was that even possible?
The nothingness extended in every direction, as far as he could see, so he tried running to his right. Only no matter how far he went, nothing changed. It was just like when he’d been behind the scenes in Jupiter City . . . or in the nothingness that the Magister had stuck him in, back when Bethany had first taken him into the Kiel Gnomenfoot series.
That raised some terrifying questions too. Had he been inside Nobody those other times as well? Nobody had shown up both times in person, yes, but for someone who could rewrite their body, it wouldn’t be difficult to make a smaller version inside himself.
“Let me out!” he shouted finally, more for his own sanity than anything. The idea that he’d be stuck here while Nobody did whatever he wanted to Bethany and everyone else made him want to punch something. But there wasn’t even a wall of Nobody to hit anywhere. He tried stomping as hard as he could on the ground, but the ground didn’t seem to mind, and it hurt his foot, so he quickly gave up on that, too.
